(b ?Orléans, c1095; d ? after 1160). ?French poet. He was renowned for his writings and became known as ‘Primas’ because he surpassed his contemporaries. In addition to a few individual works, a collection of 23 Latin poems survives (GB-Ob Rawl.G 109, ff.3–30): it consists of learned pieces on classical themes as well as poems of fulsome praise or trenchant abuse. No melodies have survived for any of his works, but they certainly had a profound influence on lyric poetico-musical activity during the 12th and 13th centuries, and their style is mirrored in several Notre Dame conductus poems.
L. Delisle: ‘Le poète Primat’, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, xxxi (1871), 302–11
W. Meyer: ‘Die Oxforder Gedichte des Primas, Magister Hugo von Orleans’, Nachrichten der kgl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse (1907), 75–111, 113–75
J.H. Hanford: ‘The Progenitors of Golias’, Speculum, i (1926), 38–58
F.J.E. Raby: A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, ii (Oxford, 1934, 2/1957), 171–80
C. Witke: Latin Satire: the Structure of Persuasion (Leiden, 1970), 200–32
J.B. Bauer: ‘Stola und Tapetum: zur den Oxforder Gedichte des Primas’, Mittellateinisches Jb, xvii (1982), 130–33
C.J. McDonough: The Oxford Poems of Hugh Primas and the Arundel Lyrics (Toronto, 1984)
C.J. McDonough: ‘A Poetic Glosula on Amiens, Reims and Peter Abelard’, Speculum, lxi (1986), 806–35
A.G. Rigg: ‘Golias and Other Pseudonyms’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser., xxviii (1987), 65–109
F. Adcock, ed. and trans.: Hugh Primas and the Archpoet (Cambridge, 1994)
GORDON A. ANDERSON/THOMAS B. PAYNE